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Are we addicted to our smartphones?

Are we addicted to our smartphones?

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by :

KatiedeS

As part of the 'Facebook generation', we have grown up in a world where access to the internet is constantly at our fingertips and we're able to connect with people at the touch of a button. Nowadays, it's become increasingly common to offer guests the wifi password along with a cup of tea when they come round to visit. We have become addicted to our smartphones.

Of course, smartphones are undeniably useful and have revolutionised our lives in so many ways. Thanks to thousands of apps available to download, we're now able to do almost anything when we're out and about. However, it seems a shame that these addictive pieces of technology are slowly beginning to take over our lives. It's so easy to become dependant on our phones, whether it's to find your way around with the map application or even just check the time. As a result we're becoming more anti-social, choosing to consult the internet rather than talk face-to-face with other human beings.

Even when we're socialising, it seems most of us struggle without our phones at arm's reach. Phones were invented to keep us more connected, and indeed they have done just that. We can now get in contact by an endless list of social media outlets, yet this means we're starting to lack genuine contact with each other. People are connecting more and more across screens rather than in person, even when it comes to relationships - dating apps and websites are more popular than ever before. Recently, an artist released a series of images depicting people in social situations and edited out their smartphones and tablets. The result was a collection of powerful images that have, perhaps ironically, gone viral. They force people to wake up to the fact that we are no longer interacting properly with each other.

I'm not to say I'm any better (as I write this my phone is sitting across from me at my desk). However, I'm trying to use it less and less when I'm out and about. When I first arrived in France I didn't have any internet on my phone and it was actually quite liberating. Rather than constantly checking my phone for messages or searching for directions, I was forced to talk to people and find my way around independently. Next time you're out with your friends, put your phone away and see how long you can last without it.

Are we addicted to our smart phones?
Smart phones are phones with superior technology. It’s no secret that smart phones are everywhere these days. It seems like nearly everyone has one. A smart phone can do many of the things. Now we can’t imagine living without them. It helps people around the world to understand each other. They can access to the internet, take photographs and you vide chat with friends and loved ones. People get news on the happening around the world. It has the power to educate and broaden our minds. Children’s knowledge increases. People can gain a lot of knowledge. Smart phones entertain people. They watch a lot of intellectual programs, play games and listen to music. Smart phone is useful for everyone.
Smart prone has advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages are:
1. Camera.
2. Search information on net.
3. Notes.
4. E-mail.
5. Entertainment – video, electronic books, music, games.
Smart phones can affect people’s lives. People depend on smart phones the whole day. People waste of time on the internet instead of having active life. Smart phone makes people violent. People get lazy. Many people have eyesight problems. Sometimes lose communicate with friends, relationships. They take time away from activities such as reading conversation and outdoor games.
Disadvantages are:
1. Dependence.
2. Damaging relationships friends.
3. Insomnia.
4. Tiring.
5. Health problems – eyesight problem.
6. Wastage of time.

I think that smartphones are very useful in our lives.We all can get information About media by smartphones.Adventures are that we can connect with relatives and to everybody. All use smartphones and get a lot of information. Disadvantures are that smartphones are very dangerous for our lives and children because of ray.

Hi, I am Telnaz teacher from Tovuz, Azerbaijan
I think that smartpones are very important for us, we can communicate with our friends, relatives, and etc. we get a ,lot of via smartphones,
there are some disadvantages as well. because we get tired, they are harmful for our health.

Hi telnaz,
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Best wishes, Joanna.

Yes, I strongly agree that I am addicted to my phone. Nowadays, not having my phone in my hand makes me feel like something missing. Before going out, I always check my phone whether I pick up or not. Even though I meet with my friends and talk some interesting topics, I am used to scrolling my news feeds and etc.

Hello I am from Azerbaijan.I think smartphones make us feel happy and productive.I m a little addicted my smartphone. Because I can't share everything with my family or friends so I prefer tell my problems or happiness with virtual people.Same time they have improved the world and people´s life scince they arrived;

I like smart phones but I don't accept the phone becoming the great part of my life. I think I'm not addicted to my smartphone. Do you believe I don't like facebook much and I use it rarely? I use a smartphone just for helping my works and gaining knowledge. I also use facebook just to know what is happening now,to get information and knowledge. I don't have many fb friends. A phone should not be a luxury, it should be a useful tool. But, some people are using phones just for luxury. They buy the most modern, latest and most expensive phones for no purpose but for luxury, and to be popular among the friends.
And, I have the same opinion with katiedeS. Today, people are chatting and making friends from social apps and websites. They spend most of their time in them. We should realize that they are just virtual friends. The more we spend time with virtual friends, the less we have time to improve our relationship with real friends, including our families. We should balance our digital and real life. I feel sad and very sorry when I look photos like people sitting close together, but not looking each other. What do you think they're doing?......of course, they are using phones. We are digital citizens. And I agree that phone is a really important and useful digital thing, and helps us. But, we should not be too much addicted to the smartphones, and smartphones should not be a luxury. Finally, I just want to say that we use phones but phones should not use us.

hi sanpai28! i love your way of thinking! As we know, people these days are using and abusing smart phone a lot. however, it till plays an important part in our live. for examples, my classmate always post notices on facebook, and i must check it at every time, to be sure that i have the exact information about the lesson, just because if i forget to check, i may be the only person attend the class that day :)) . so i have to say that i'm not addicted to smart phone but this modern lifestyles make me like that, and it is a belief that we have no choice, sometimes we say that yeah we just check the information and stop it immediately after we finish, but we can't keep our words, some attractive things will distract us and we will spend a lot of time to look and search , and we eventually realise that why the time pass so fast T_T. i wish that one days in the near future , people will have some new invention that connects people more effective than using smartphone, and of course, that machine is still researched by me hj. nice to meet you!

Hi halfblood-prince!
Hmm......I think you must be Harrypotter's fan. ; D I am pleased to hear that you love my way of thinking! Your idea is also awesome, too. Yes, the modern digital lifestyles push us in their flow although we don't want to. The thing becoming good or bad for us will only depend on us.
Are you really doing a research? If it is,.........Wow, I admire you!
Nice to meet you,too halfblood prince! :) Have a nice day!

Hello sanpai28, I agree with you in most parts of your opinion.
By the way, I wanted to know what virtual friends were. Do you mean those who you contact with everyday online? I don't meet my real-world friends so often. What's the difference between occasional real-world friends and everyday digital friends?
Perhaps, you will probably want to meet "friends", yet will not want to meet digital pals who are perfect time killer to each other. Do you think so?
(-ω- ?)

Hi Ken,
Virtual friends are the online friends. There is no difference between real-world friends and digital friends. But, there is difference between good friend and bad friend. There can be good friends in the virtual world and there can also be bad friends in the real world. I DID NOT say that real-world friends are better than virtual-world friends. A person who cares you, who shares our feelings,either bad or good, improve each other's skills and knowledge and always looks for our advantages is a good friend,whether he/she is online or from the real world. Honestly, I don't have many good friends in the real world. When I use internet, I have found really good friends, HADIA, ELSA, GIANGGIANG, you and a few others. I just said to balance your digital and real life, manage to spend time not only with virtual-world good friends but also with real-world good friends and family. I hope you will be clearer about my opinion.

Hello Sanpai
Last year, I also had the same opinion like you, but in fact, real-world friends are greater than digital friends as their feelings are so real, they express their idea through their faces, their laugh,...and If they say something, they do not have much time to think and prepare. So, we can trust them. But, online friends, we don't know their mood, they have more time to consider before typing messages or write to us....so we're not sure about them. :))

Couldn't agree more, gianggiang!
(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧
By the way, do you remember the days when you were a baby or a small kids?
I remember we struggled for communication by the expression of adults' faces and tone of voice, which was really essential to survive in a community!
╭( ･ㅂ･)و ̑̑

Hi sanpai,
Cheers for your reply! By the way, it's too bad that you don't have many good friends in the real world!! Honestly, I don't have a bad friend, I mean I don't make friends with bad ones, because my teacher and parents always tell me "Don't make bad friends; don't hang out with bad crowd; cut off relation with them!"
Anyway......................
(。´･ω･)?
We experience and understand the world through signals that are received by the senses and interpreted by the brain. I think we need the five senses!

I agree with your teachers and parents' advice, but what about this situation:
+) A mom advises her son - an excellent student: You shouldn't make friend with bad students, they just waste your time and you may get involved in bad behavior ( like them). Stay away them!
+) Another mom advises her son- a"not-very-good" student : You should make friend with excellent students and learn from them, they will help you become better.
Not easy.............

Hello ganging! Thanks for your comment.
Yes, there're some situations like you suggested, and I totally agree with both mom's advice, too.
But what I'm not exactly sure is about a different situation for 'an excellent student' and a 'not-very-good student'. I mean.... I just thought an "excellent" student wouldn't follow his mom's advice because they know how to behave from the beginning!
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)﻿
Also, a "not-very-good student" wouldn’t follow the advice and make a friend with excellent students because they would suffer from a feeling of inferiority! No way!
( ･᷄ὢ･᷅ )
Hmm..... sounds like an armchair theory.
Give me more difficult questions, giang! :D
⁽˙³˙⁾◟(๑•́ ₃ •̀๑)◞⁽˙³˙⁾

We can't know a person's attitude or mind, whether he/she is good or bad at the beginning when we met. It takes some time to know each other thoroughly. In my life, I have met friends who are really good and who pretend themselves as good friends. I have also met with ones who always look others' weak points and point out not to help them but to blame them and to put them into the shame in the audience. But I did not cut off relation with them immediately like cutting with a sharp knife, especially with those I have to meet every day. Instead, I spend less and less time in socialising with them and finally the relation is cut off.
But, you are right, Ken. Some derogatory ones are worth only with cutting of the relation immediately.

I like technology, but I think that technology is inside our heads in a way that you can't get it away. You have to have a smartphone because if you don't have it, you aren't popular,(and not a normal smartphone, the last fashionable smartphone, for example, the IPhone 7), you have to get a profile and say all what you do and what do you think in all social networks to be the most important person and feel gorgeous with you...There are a lot of stereotypes with technology, and it's difficult to solve the problem, especially in the world of the adolescence, that it's increased with the "vantage" of the e-life(Whatssap,Snapchat, Calculator...)

I always try to not use my smatphone when I am with my family and friends.Also,I wrk agter school I don't have internet and I am ok with it.I think people can't live without their smartphones and I believe this should change.This is an important problem!!! Smartphone is not good for your health and people know about this,but they don't believe and use their smartphones everywhere(in school,in the work,in the street.at home and everewhere)!!! I think that at least we ean try to put our smartphones away for a second and just live our life with our family and friends!!! Please!!!

The problem is not our phones, but internet..... internet is inside our phones. If everybody have a prime generation phone, or a phone without internet. I think that we will not be addicted to our phones.... But it revolutionized. We are to pay attention with the new generation phones. We have to use it when it's absolute necessary

You are right and I try to use it less... I think people can't live without their smartphones and I believe this should change.. Also when I was at my village I didn't have internet and it was a big difference BUT I made lots of friends and had fun!!!!!

It has become increasingly common to surf the web for hours, watch YT < and so on.
And NOW it is a huge problem for all of us.
Undeniably, there is an enormous amount of usefulness, and advantages of using our smartphones.
But , there is a question. How long and how do you need to use your device?
Thanks to science we can figure that.
Lets imagine average amount of free time of person, who studies, sleeps, going in for sports.
And from that we have about 6 hours.
But as for me, I spend quite a lot time in the internet.
But control is really important for free tine and , especially smartphone
I agree with text. so we need to control ourselves from this invention of technology.
So CONTROL IS OUR EVERYTHING

This is an important problem !!! Nowaday, people use smartphone everywhere (when they go WC, they use it in here)
Smartphone is not good for your health when we use it everyday (many hours a day). SO We don't have life experience.
I think the world is slowly in developmet. We can use smartphone to relax (listen to music, play games...). If you want to read book, you should buy a book (don't read in your phone, it is not good for your eyes). We should use it 30-120 minutes a day. it good for you and your life.
( Thanks the writer ) (^^)

I am a teeneger and I know that i am addicted to my cellphone, almost all the time I need it, because if I don´t have it I feel weird. I know that it´s bad, because we are leaving that tecnology consum us, we are really don´t thinking. We found everything so fast in internet and all our ingenuity has been wasted .

This a important and interesting topic, this make us sense about how we controlled the tecnology in our lives and how it affect us, i think that at least we can try to put our smarthphones away for a second and just live our life with our family and friends.

i think is relative depending on some persons because not everyone is into their phones everytime they are face to face with someone but in other cases people its just like that and thats something we really need to change, if we dont in the future, we are not going to socializing with someone. We need to try leaving our phones, get out of our own world and realizing that when they blame internet its truly our fault.

i think that we are so addicted to cellphones and tecnology because we are dependant from that but its time to give a step back and go outside and see how wonderful its your life and see what the world has prepared for you and for your life

I think this is a good reflection ´cause as we all know, the smartphones are very useful for our lifes, they have improved the world and people´s life scince they arrived, but even if we say that we are overusing the intenet, and giving it the wrong use, we know that no matter what we could say, we go to our houses and spend all the time in the internet, in the laptop and in our cellphones, it´s stupid to criticize the internet ´cause we created it and we use it wrong, so the problem of this social apocalypse is not the internet, the problem is us, we have caused this anti-social lifestyle.

I think that some people are addicted to the smarphones but this is the future, all in the future will be technology and it will made us addicted to all that and in this culturen who hasn´t a smartphone, is a strange in the society, so try to use to it.

I think that the technology is each day consuming us, because we can not live without an electronic device I know that everyone has one, but that is not bad, that is so good, but the thing that matter here is that we do not know how to use that, so my recommendation is that everyone of us take care of our lives, and live the life

I'm not a big fan of the smartphone, I like desktop PC's better due to the possibilities and that it's easier to handle, has more space etc. I also play a lot of video games and on a smart phone it is impossible to play various video games or it is hard to control your character In-Game. But I'm not addicted to a PC . I am only online when it's raining or in the evening. I love to do some gardening and I love to play football (soccer). But I also have an online friend that I play with sometimes, even though playing online with friends or talking to friends online is fun, I'd rather play some football with my friends than do something through a device. Real life activities are more fun/

I don't know if i am addicted to i because i don't have my own phone so i usually use my dad's Ipad, my mom's phone and my computer to watch films (Teen Wolf, The Forest ,..) or to play games. I use technology about 1-3 hours a day, or maybe 4-5 hours when mom and dad are away from home (i can use computer without asking for permission xD) Most of my friends who are bad-behaved and not good at study all have phones! I am quite a good student so, well, i think i'm not addicted to it :)

im not that much have spent with my phone. im always with me story books .nowr days most of the one s specially teens are addicted to smartphones, facebook,instagram,twitter etc. its not fair.
didnt point anyone by my opinion.

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Our Magazine is written by young people from the UK. Each year we select a new group of bloggers, from the British Council’s language assistants, who share their experiences of learning languages and living abroad. The views and opinions expressed in the articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the LearnEnglish Teens team.